Abstract

Surrogate models, capable of emulating the robust first principle based models, facilitate the online implementation of computationally expensive industrial process optimization. However, the heuristic estimation of parameters governing the surrogate building often renders them erroneous or under-trained. Current work aims at presenting a novel parameter free surrogate building approach, specifically focusing on Artificial Neural Networks. The proposed algorithm implements Sobol sampling plan and intelligently designs the configuration of network with simultaneous estimation of optimal transfer function and training sample size to prevent overfitting and enabling maximum prediction accuracy. A novel Sample Size Determination algorithm based on a potential concept of hypercube sampling technique adds to the speed of surrogate building algorithm, thereby assuring faster convergence. Surrogates models for a highly nonlinear industrial sintering process constructed using the novel algorithm resulted in 7 times faster optimization.